While reading about diphthongs in a different question today, I noticed that while the word "diphthong" doesn't seem to contain any actual diphthongs, it does contain 3 sets of consonant groupings.

When I was younger, I used to think consonant groupings actually were called diphthongs. I know now that I was mistaken, but I do wonder - is there a single word that describes consonant groupings?

After doing some searching on Google, Wikipedia and this site, I'm unable to find a definitive answer besides "consonant cluster" or "consecutive consonant". Those terms may be the only accurate ones available, but I would be mildly disappointed.

Just to echo @tchrist, your question is ambiguous. Your comment about 'diphthong' suggests you're interested in digraphs, your comparison to diphthongs suggests you're interested in either coarticulated consonants, or phonemes which consist of a sequence of two consonantal targets (affricates and a few other odds and ends). Answering would be easier if you told us which it is.
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Gaston ÜmlautAug 29 '12 at 7:05

@Gaston; choster read my intentions well, as did you. I was looking for "digraphs". However, the list you just put in your comments made for some very interesting reading. Linguistics is interesting to me but I have a lot to learn about it.
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Marcus_33Aug 29 '12 at 12:13

OK well, in addition to digraphs there are trigraphs and tetragraphs: groups of 3 or 4 letters used to represent a single phoneme.
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Gaston ÜmlautAug 29 '12 at 15:28

2 Answers
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The directly analogous term is indeed consonant cluster, a combination of consonant sounds that appear together.

It is possible that you are thinking of a digraph, which however is two characters representing a single sound, rather than a blending of adjacent sounds as with a dipthong or consonant cluster. For example, the ch in church or the sh in hashish are digraphs.

The technical term is simply "consonant cluster" or "consonant blend". As spoken, they are part of the general class of "phonemes" (especially "digraphs", groups that indicate a non-transitive mouth position, such as "th").

Many phonetic alphabets have specific characters for phonemes that we use consonant clusters for; for instance, the Greek "theta" is a single character that Romanizes to "th". Norse runic lanuages had the "thorn" character, with much the same purpose. The Russian character ш is pronounced similarly to "sh" as in "show". By contrast, the Japanese alphabet is made up primarily of consonant-vowel pairs, and the only "consonant clusters" seen in Romanized spellings involve "n", which is the only consonant sound that exists unpaired in gana/kana (it also exists paired).

No, things like th require only one IPA character. They are not two different consonant sounds.
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tchristAug 28 '12 at 17:54

Where exactly did I say different? Please remove the downvote.
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KeithSAug 28 '12 at 18:01

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In English, 'th' is a digraph and not a consonant cluster. In English, 'th' is phonemically a single consonant, even though we spell it with two letters. I believe 'ts' in Japanese is a better example for the single phoneme–consonant cluster dichotomy.
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Peter Shor Aug 28 '12 at 18:07

Actually the only occurrence of the sound "ts" is in the single character "tsu"; neither "t" nor "s" sounds exist by themselves. Where you might hear "ts" (or other consonants) pronounced without a trailing vowel is in an unstressed syllable at the end of a word ending in "u"; the "u" of such a syllable is whispered or simply dropped.
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KeithSAug 28 '12 at 18:20

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I think your answer might not have received a downvote if you had done a better job of clarifying when you mean consonant sound versus consonant letter.
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nohat♦Aug 28 '12 at 18:56